Al, you are going to need some glassware - 3-4 glass DJs or other large containers for collecting the strip. and when you do the spirit run you will need 3 times as many jars, bottles, whatever you are using now to collect it in.
To mod the still, you need to take the long waste water pipe from the cooling output and attach it to the top of the condenser - you have now bypassed the reflux coil (the coil in the 2" column).
The problem with the T500 and stripping, is the condenser is not really up to it, you are going to have to run the water really fast - it's very wasteful.
Fire up the still, when its up to temp, start the water going really quickly, check the condenser near the product output is keeping cool, the rest of the condenser should be really hot.
You should be able to strip 23L wash in about 2hours after heat up. and will end with around 7lts depending on initial ABV.
Strip another 2-3 x 23l washes - this is why you need lots of storage.
Charge the still with the strip water down to 40% if its above this, and do a normal spirit run. Remember you are going to collect 3 or 4 times as much alcohol as running a wash, so again you need enough containers to collect in.
The output will be faster, and the spirit should benefit from the double distillation, and it saves time and energy overall Vs doing 2 or 3 spirit runs with wash.
As I said the condenser is the issue here, if you are handy you could build a longer copper condenser of 1" over 3/8" that would replace the standard condenser and let you waste less water.
Also check out Aussie distiller, where several guys have done pot still conversions on the T500 - some are very pretty too.
Here is my conversion in stainless - the over sized condenser is sized for running 6KW 1.5" over 1" for a stripper I set out to build, but the right size boiler didn't come through, you wont need anything like this size - also its large as stainless is much less efficient at transferring heat - I only use a dribble of cooling when this is on the T500 though.
for stripping I run it on this 50L keg so I can fill the T500 boiler with just 2 x 45L strips.
CC
Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:53 pm
